Doctors Asked Officers to Unshackle a Patient. They Refused for 26 Days.
One May afternoon in 2024, a 49-year-old homeless man with a long history of mental illness stood in the middle of a street in the Bronx, talking to himself, screaming at traffic and nearly getting hit by cars.
The police were summoned, checked his record and found he had three outstanding warrants, including one for felony weapon possession. The man was arrested after resisting, court records show, and was taken to a locked psychiatric ward at Jacobi Medical Center, a city hospital in the Bronx, to await arraignment.
There, the man, identified in the records only as Louis M. to protect his privacy, was handcuffed to the bed, shackled at the legs and guarded by a police officer.
His arraignment was delayed, but the restraints stayed on. After three days, his psychiatrist asked police officers to remove them; they declined, repeatedly. He remained chained to his bed around the clock, except for one or two bathroom trips a day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/nyregion/nypd-shackle-mentally-ill.html
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